So it's coming down to the wire but I'm determined to get this thing done. Over the last week I've worked pretty hard at both learning the song on the piano as well as learning how to properly use the portable studio. As I mentioned in my last post, learning the song on the piano hasn't been an easy task. There are several subtle notes and keys strewn throughout the song and because I don't read sheet music, this has made it all the more challenging to learn by ear. Thankfully, from sifting through YouTube, I've found some slightly helpful tutorial videos that have given me some guidance as to how these chords are played. The issue is that many of the tutorials have their own take on the song it seems so the real challenge has been trying to settle into my own comfort level with the song. Below is one of the videos I used:

While this video was most helpful in learning the verses, it turns out you have to pay for the rest of the song. Nonetheless, it kick started me on making this song my own on my keyboard. Meanwhile, I have also been getting hands on help with operating the portable studio. It too is rather complicated as it has several nobs, switches, and operations that aren't totally straighforward. As a result, it's been a challenge to get a grasp on it but I'm confident I've got it covered when it comes time to put the song in tracks. Upon doing so, the song will be placed on a digital flash card for saving. Something that is also worth noting is that I've downloaded two metronome apps on my phone to help me practice my timing. This will help me better mend my song together as I'm recording tracks individually. With this in mind, I decided to record a rough draft of my progress on the keyboard. There are several errors, especially at the end, but again, this is how far I've come so far with that dimension of the song. Enjoy the video:

As you can see from the pictures, after I told my brother and some friends about my project, I've had no shortage of instruments and tools at my disposal. In fact, my brother's house has become its own poor man's studio. In all we have 3 acoustic guitars, 2 electrics, an acoustic bass, electric bass, microphone, drum set, my keyboard, and several supplemental noise makers. Of course, for this project, I'm limiting myself to just recording a simple version of the song. In no way am I trying to recreate the song itself, but it's nice to have the assurance of having everything you need to accomplish your goal. Below is a picture of the "portable studio" I'll be using to record my tracks once I'm ready to do so. As you can see from all the knobs, it's a learning experience all its own in terms of figuring out how to use it. Thankfully I'll have some help from my own cousin who is fairly versed in using it.

The device is capable of letting me lay 8 individual tracks which is more than I'll ever need for this project. The nifty thing is I can control sound effects and equalization of each recorded piece alone to get the right sound I need. Furthermore, the studio will provide a metronome for me to keep time as well.The two pieces you see next to it are the head phones I'll be using to listen to tracks while I record. The other i a MIDI audio interface. MIDI is an input/output standard for certain musical instruments suh as my keyboard and microphone. In other words, it provides an alternative way for these instruments to communicate with the studio and other devices.Last but never least is my beloved keyboard. I've had it for well over a decade now and it's slowly beginning to have problems (including a power input that wont cooperate unless you tweak it just right). The important thing is that when it works, it sounds just as good as ever, even with its simple plastic keys and redundant utilities.

Song Learning UpdateI'm not sure if I mentioned it before but I had already begun learning the song on guitar and recently tried my hand at learning it on my keyboard. It turns out it's not a good idea to try learning a new song when you haven't played in almost 8 months (the sacrifices you make to become a teacher). In any case, I have some chords down, but I am clearly rust and the versions I've been learning from on youtube have been throwing me curveballs so I don't have the right sound quite yet. It's an aspect that's even more challenging when you're trying to do the heavy lifting all by ear.With that in mind, the shining light in all of this is I'm finished learning the song on guitar and know the lyrics by heart, at least to my satisfaction. I'm able to play rough versions and sing along so I'm confident that separating the two will sound much nicer. Below is my first recorded version of the song with me simply pressing play on the ipad and taking a solo shot at it on guitar. Keep in mind, I'm not much of a rhythmist on guitar nor am I a spectacular singer - A fact that has me rather shy and contributed to my decision to hide my face - but it serves as a significant marker in my progress. Only 2 weeks left to do this this! Enjoy....

After long deliberation and talking to fellow music lovers I've finally decided on the song I want to learn and record. For this project I will learn the song Karma Police by the popular band Radiohead. In the past, I had never really given the band it's due attention until about a couple of years ago when my friend of mine turned me onto their more recent albums. Since then I have gradually gravitated to their sound and have become more and more of a fan over time. Karma Police is one of Radiohead's most popular songs and comes from an earlier album called OK Computer released in 1997. While the song was relatively new to me, I stumbled across a few versions of the song on Youtube over the last couple of months and naturally it has made its way onto my personal wish list of songs I enjoy and want to learn.

The other songs I had on my list were hard to eliminate as I in some way shape or form enjoy all of them. With this in mind, choosing this particular song came down to a number of factors that swayed my decision as well:

Resources - The sheer number of resources associated with this song give it a heavy advantage. I was able to find multiple quality videos of covers, some highly rated tabs, and even some straightforward tutorials.

Layers - The song has the ability to accommodate being played by both piano and guitar. Also, there are at least 3 mood/tone changes throughout which adds to the intrigue.

Degree of Difficulty - The song is just complex enough to have me work at each piece of the puzzle, especially guitar, piano (no tutorials for this), and vocals. Yet it is simple 4/4 time and just playable enough to not overly exceed my current skill level. Note: This aspect, especially in the vocal department eliminated some choices in itself.

Popularity Level - I mentioned before that I wanted a recognizable song but I didn't want to end up doing a cliche or annoyingly popular song. In my own opinion, and this is arguable, Karma Police fits that specification. Fittingly, it comes from a band that is both widely known and resistant to the spotlight (Radiohead self-released their 7th album In Rainbows and allowed fans to set the price of purchase).

Flexibility - After watching several of the covers and digging deeper, there are a few nuances of the song that not only make it more interesting but seemingly add more room to play. Specifically, there are actually 2 versions of the 2nd verse. ("Karma police, arrest this girl her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill...." vs. "Karma police, arrest this girl, she looks as me as if she owns the world..."). Furthermore, as far as the covers and live performances are concerned, everyone sort of takes subtle liberties with lyrics, structure, and chords of the song.

General Interest - If I'm being honest, none of the other factors really matter all that much if you aren't genuinely interested in playing the music. At it's core this song is a great song with great lyrics and in the end I know it's gonna be fun to play.

Progress updateDuring my research, I was able to half attempt to play various tabs I found on guitar. As I began to lean towards selecting Karma Police as my song my consistency in practicing it over the last couple of days has grown as well. Overall, I'm fairly confident I have all the chords and rhythm memorized and down. As it stands, I'm still working on the flow of the lyrics and am currently trying to sing while I play. My intention is to record these separately but I find it helpful towards learning the song thoroughly. Below I have an example of the tab I'm learning from as well as a couple examples of covers I intend to use.

As I suspected, one of the hardest parts of starting my project was picking the right song for it. I love a ton of different music so the sample space is huge. That in itself, creates a problem of indecisiveness. However, the bigger issue lies in being able to determine whether or not I can pick up the song on 2 different instruments let alone be able to sing it. Even if I love the song, the limitations of my abilities likely eliminates some possibilities. On the other hand, there is room for tweaking the song to fit my level of playing skill or vocal range. Furthermore, I have on many occasions learned a simplified version of several songs, including those that didn't seem like they could include piano or guitar. Finally, and this is not completely mandatory, but I want to make sure I pick a fairly recognizable song so I can critique myself. If no one knows the song, it's hard to validate one's success in learning the song.

Coming into this, I knew what most of my research would consist of online tutorials, videos, or websites. For instance, given a song, my go-to source for guitar tabs is usually http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/. This site relies on user input for its tabs but is pretty reliable as it offers a star ranking system. More importantly, if offers hundreds of tabs for almost any artist or band you can think of. Conversely, because I can't read sheet music, most of my piano songs are learned by ear or through Youtube videos. While the pickings are slim for certain tutorial material, there are still several videos for both guitar and piano as well as thousands of cover song examples. It's easy to find some great talent on the web including videos that give you some visual evidence of where your hands and fingers need to be. If you look even further, you can find some great tutorial pages. Here's a list of some of my favorite Youtube Channels I go to for a song:

Joe Raciti - Has hundreds of piano tutorial videos of both popular and classic songs. Normally has overhead view for easy sight of chords and hand placement.

PianoJohn113 - Same with this guy. Easy overhead view. Limited on his genre, but fantastic if you want to learn complicated songs from the likes of Elton John, Billy Joel, and the Beatles.

Marioverehrer - There are several pages like this. Not my favorite but it is possible to find some gems with channels like these.

Boyce Avenue - These guys have gained fame for their incredible covers on Youtube and have amassed almost 8,000,000 subscribers. No tutorials here, but since almost all their videos are closeups of themselves, it's perfect for catching a few chords and filling in the rest on your own. Other than that, they're really good and entertaining. They're among the gold standard for covers on Youtube.

So with all this information and more at hand, I feel that the best best way to narrow my song selection down is to do some research through these videos and begin exploring songs that I like. In doing so I can get a feel for whether or not I can pull it off and whether the song is is interesting enough fro me to learn. As a start to my search, I thought I'd list some of my initial ideas and go from there.

Songs I already know on one instrument: (Kind of cheating yes, but the songs listed are some that I'm truly interested in recording a version of myself)

After much deliberation, I've finally decided on my 20% project. For this project, I want to attempt to record a multilayer song using a digital track layer and equalizer. Specifically I want to record at least 3 instrumental tracks for a cover song including piano, guitar, and vocals. I'm well behind my colleagues in timing for this project but it was well worth the wait to brainstorm and settle on this idea. Aside from food and sports, I'm a big fan of music including most genres and have taken up playing a couple of instruments as hobbies through the years. Most notably, I've been playing piano since I was about 5 or 6 years old beginning with cheap little keyboards and moving on up to my busted and broken-in Casio (she still sounds like a beauty). As I've mentioned before, I've virtually never taken formal lessons nor do I know how to read music. In a way though, I've become partial to my improvisational and sloppy style of messing around. Additionally around high school, I also began occasionally picking up a guitar and learning chords here and there. I have since owned my own acoustic and electric guitars though I am most comfortable with playing the former while the latter remains a work in progress. Needless to say, I am no master of piano or guitar, but they provide me with personal satisfaction and a platform to try my hand at playing the music I love. As a result, I think making an attempt at recording a cover song would be an amazingly fun project for me to pursue.

My personal experience with playing piano and guitar is largely for fun so I dabble mostly in learning to play other people's music or cover songs. I would try my hand at some originality but I feel it would not only be personally difficult to produce something like that, but it would also over complicate this project given the specifications. Besides, I've had little to no former experience of writing anything of my own, though I some day plan to. For this project, I want to focus on learning a new song on both instruments as well as learning to mix them together on a single track. Among some of the hurdles this presents is that while I've learned several simple songs before on either instrument, I've only rarely tried to learn the same song on both let alone learned to sing the lyrics. More importantly, whether original or not, I have never attempted to record myself in any way on either instrument. With this in mind, there are 2 learning experiences to be had: The first being that I learn a new song musically and the second being that I learn methods to record, edit, and produce the music itself.

As I mentioned before, the project requires the possibility of failure as well as some measurable success. In doing this, I could certainly fail by not being able to learn or play the song. Additionally I could fall short by not being able to produce an adequate result or sample of the cover song. Conversely, a successful project should result in a coherent and recognizable track of the cover song. Whether people deem it as noteworthy or not isn't of my concern but it would be nice to produce a quality piece of work.

Open Ended Questions About My Topic:

What song will I attempt to learn?

Will complexity play a role? What genre will I choose?

Will I develop a song that I already know for one instrument?

How will I learn the piano track for the song?

Do tabs exist for the song I choose? If not, how will I learn to play the guitar portion?

How will I know I have learned a portion to satisfaction? Are simple chords enough or do I want to make the song more complex?

How will I record the vocals? How will I judge my own singing?

How long will it take to learn the song in total?

How will I record each track or instrument?

How will I record non-electric instruments? (acoustic?)

Will I need software to record and produce this music?

Will I need more equipment than what I have?

Will I need to edit or splice tracks?

What exactly do I expect with my finished product? How do I know I'm finished?

As I finally kick off my 20% project I wanted to take some time to mention some of the many other ideas I had when this opportunity first came around. Of course, I had to keep in mind some important aspects of this. The first being that it needed to be something I enjoy enough that it wouldn't feel like work. There's no sense in taking advantage of an activity like this if it wasn't going to include something I'm fairly passionate about. Secondly, it needed to involve some form of creation or making. That is, at the end of it, whether I was learning, building, or doing something, I need to produce some type of ultimate tangible result. Finally, the last requirement stipulates that there exists the possibility of failure. So with these in mind, here are some initial ideas I had for my 20% project (With my declaration coming next blog):

Develop a sports attribute

Anyone who knows me well knows I'm an absolute die hard sports fan. I love all of it (Well almost all). It's something that has made itself part of my personality and ultimately commands a big part of my interest and attention. Naturally, one of my first ideas was to work on my horrible batting (I can barely make contact with 60-70mph) or improve my long range shooting for basketball. My other long shot idea was to attempt and learn to play ice hockey. I know and love the sport but I'd likely resemble Bambi on the ice. In the end, I didn't feel like I'd be creating anything for the first things and simply aiming to improve percentages wasn't significant enough for me. As for playing hockey, it would not only take much longer than 5 weeks to learn but be extremely expensive as well.

Create a sports blog

It should be no surprise that in addition to my sports obsession, I am also an avid fantasy sports player. In fact, I am the commissioner of my own fantasy football league. Aside from keeping things in order, a hobby of mine is writing weekly columns for for the league page. In recent years, I've received some compliments on my writing style as well as some complaints when I haven't written a new column within a few weeks, so I appreciate these small gestures as tokens of validation. I'm a big fan of ESPN's Bill Simmons' and would love to emulate him, however, something like this would be time consuming and lacks the ability to measure its success.

Learn to make sushi

It's my favorite food on the planet. I think I could eat sushi 3 times a day 7 days a week, so learning to make fresh rolls would be both awesome and delicious. I don't believe it would take a long time nor do I think it would be extremely complicated. After some quick research though, this could be potentially expensive. "Sushi grade" fish doesn't exactly come cheap (Between $20 and $40 per pound) and stumbling through an experimental food making experience doesn't help my cause in that regard. I would love to some day learn to masterfully make sushi, but I believe that is for another time.

Learn to read sheet music

I've been playing piano since I was about 5 or 6 years old and am for the most part self-taught. As a result I have little to no ability to read sheet music and mostly pick up songs by ear, trial and error, or video tutorials. As beneficial as it would be to learn, my glaring concern with this idea is that I'm not very passionate about learning it. Many would suggest that part of mastering a musical instrument is becoming proficient in all of it'a aspects. But I can't shake the notion that, despite loving to play piano, I am relatively apathetic towards learning sheet music.

Brew a homemade beer

You don't live in San Diego for a decade without encountering the city's notoriety for being a mecca of micro brewing in the US. There's dozens of local breweries strewn around the area, many of which aren't lacking in quality, and it has contributed to a developing beer culture here. So much so that mini brewing kits have become a popular trend. I even know a few friends and family members who've tried. I'd be lying if I didn't think it was a cool idea to try myself. Again though, several hurdles derailed this idea including cost and cost. More significantly, while I can certainly fail to brew a beer, how do I measure how successful I am? How do I display my results. The final straw here was that I ultimately decided to concede to a more appropriate and fitting project.